RELEASED-wip Cesana Sestriere Historic Hillclimb

ok guys.. I made what should be the first beta version. It's been tested right now and if everything's in place by tomorrow I'll publish it for you, changing first post and typing WIP and to-do list. Here's a fresh just-made video of the track, enjoy!

but since youtube's an a**hole, video quality is worse than usual.. will look into that too

I did try your track late last night, it ran ok, but took long to load. Now I took the liberty to peak inside one of the kn5 files... and it shows the issues of RTB build tracks.

You've got 359 texture files, most of which are duplicates. Like STONE_WALL.dds to STONE_WALL15.dds are all the same identical texture, the same is true for every same named texture with a number behind it, you are trowing away A LOT of memory space and performance here (I also expect your upload from RD to be deleted, as the site does not allow split uploads afaik).

the marked files (~92 files, 119 MB) are unique, the rest are duplicates

I assume RTB did the same with materials meaning you have tons of duplicate materials all around the track, which may not be that bad for performance but make it harder for you to maintain the track if every house needs to be modified on its own.

There is also the common "xpack" issue of 1024x1024 DXT5 textures of single colours

edit: I know this sounds negative but I really like your track and the idea There are too few well done hillclimb tracks around for AC

thank you for your reply!
I uploaded on RD like that as I saw some skin file uploaded that way, and remembered there were some tracks done like that in the past, wich I can't find no more. I wrote RD asking how to proceed too, and I will take away the files asap if anything's breaking their policies.
I know about duplicated textures, but can't find a way to solve it going through RTB. Should I do it manually in KsEditor each time or is there a better method? I'm planning to move everything away from RTB, but I have some problems with terrain mask doing so, and I can't align pivots correctly if I get terrain from RTB and let's say roads or houses from other programs, that's the reason I'm still going through the xpacker. I plan to focus on this from now on, as it will solve my trees problems too.
Materials are the way I set them up right now, as I need to test and do on the road correction, and shouldn't affect performance too much as you said.
what do you mean with single colours texture issue? In lots of parts I'm still a noob and can't see what's wrong..

I'd guess (having only worked with cars but not tracks) if you're able to get the fbx files into a "real" editor like Blender, you can change all the duplicated materials per file via dropdown menu per object. I guess RTB creates a copy of a shader and its textures if you place the same object twice, for whatever reason.

Single colour textures can be tiny, no need for them to be bigger than 16x16 or thereabout, and save a lot of space.

ok, yeah, I just tried and I can solve duplicates problems outside RTB, now I have to fix the 2 exporting issues I got and I'll pack a new version.
about those 1024.. oh.. that's my problem, not rtb, I actually made those single colour the way they are. My fault on that one.
Back to work, you helped me a lot already

I'd guess (having only worked with cars but not tracks) if you're able to get the fbx files into a "real" editor like Blender, you can change all the duplicated materials per file via dropdown menu per object. I guess RTB creates a copy of a shader and its textures if you place the same object twice, for whatever reason.

Single colour textures can be tiny, no need for them to be bigger than 16x16 or thereabout, and save a lot of space.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you can use the same texture for multiple objects within XPacker. I think Brendon even did a video showing how to do it. Let me have a look...
Here it is:

I've done the "to-be-released" version, if you could test it I need some opinion on it, esp about road feeling. My modeler says it's wonderful, while I think it's too bumpy now. I'm testing on a g27 at 80% ffb.
Here's the link